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Showcase: Uneasy Congo

PERPIGNAN, France — There is no single place that Dominic Nahr calls home.

As an only child who was born in Switzerland, raised in Hong Kong and educated in Canada, Mr. Nahr has found home wherever photojournalism has taken him.

Mr. Nahr has lived with his subjects, observing their home lives and gaining access to things he might not see otherwise, in East Timor (“A Nation Divided“) and Gaza (“When Brothers Fight“).

He has slept in churches in Congo for safety while photographing refugees fleeing their own homes. Though he is only 26 years old, Mr. Nahr’s photographs of those refuges and of Congo’s brutal conflict are being exhibited in Perpignan at Visa pour l’Image, the most important international photojournalism festival.

Jean-François Leroy, the founder and director of the festival, chose Mr. Nahr’s work over entries on Congo from Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, European Pressphoto Agency, Gamma, Getty Images and many others.

“For their safety, all of the photographers work together,” Mr. Leroy said. “In the same situation, the same scene, Dominic is better.”

“There is a photograph of a body lying on the side of the road with two women walking behind it,” he continued. “This same body was photographed by 25 photographers during that day, but you have just one picture: Dominic’s.”

Since May, Mr. Nahr has been based in Kenya (“Kenya’s Border Threat“) and has been traveling back and forth to Congo, formerly called Zaire. The photographs on exhibit in Perpignan were taken last year when he entered from the Rwanda border.

“Congo is magical; very frustrating at times but very magical,” Mr. Nahr said.

“There are 5 million people without a home,” he added. “It’s hard to understand those kinds of numbers.” Mr. Nahr has witnessed the atrocious results of a war that has killed millions. He also saw rural markets open at night in total darkness, lit only by candles that were sometimes resting atop gasoline containers. He found buildings that seem unfinished in towns and cities that rarely had electricity. And he encountered ancient cars navigating what passes for roads.

There were so many ruts and potholes in the road to the provincial capital of Goma, Mr. Nahr said, that “we would have to take a different route because the holes would change day to day.”

Mr. Nahr considers himself fortunate to have been helped by veteran conflict photographers like Walter Astrada of Agence France-Presse and Jerome Delay of The Associated Press. Mr. Astrada’s photographs of the unrest in Madagascar are also on display at Perpignan.

One day, Mr. Nahr was driving through the countryside with Mr. Delay, Benedicte Kurzen of VII and Noel Quidu of Gamma when an old man approached them. He said he had something to show them and took the photographers to a small settlement.

They moved from one house to another, in each one finding men, women and children who had been executed in their homes by Tutsi rebels. Mr. Nahr counted 16 dead within 15 minutes. In all, 150 people had been massacred.

“At first, you feel like a scavenger because you’re hanging over these bodies,” Mr. Nahr said, “but you have to document it. This had to be remembered. Laws were broken. There had to be evidence and this had to be remembered.”

Mr. Nahr wanted to stay longer but the photographers were in dangerous territory, so they left. Most of his pictures were too graphic to be published.

Despite the danger, Mr. Nahr wished he had stayed and documented the massacre. He plans to return to Congo as often as he can.

“Congo is a place where you need long-term projects,” he said. “I’d love to work on different narratives, to get at the subtlety beyond just refugees and the war. Many stories stereotype Africa, but there’s so much more there.”

Few publications are paying attention to the daily atrocities in Congo, Mr. Leroy said. “Four million people are killed and almost nobody is publishing anything about it,” he said. “They’re just publishing celebrities.”

Mr. Nahr, however, says he is determined to make the world see what is happening.

“I want to go deeper in towards the front lines.”

James Estrin, a staff photographer at The Times and a co-editor of Lens, is reporting this week from Visa pour l’Image.

Correction | Tuesday, 12:00 p.m. Mr. Nahr is 26 years old, not 25, as an earlier version of this post stated.

Dominic’s images are consistently powerful and thought provoking. I have been watching his work over the last several years and am always impressed by how he puts his stories together and seems to connect with his subjects.

James thank you for sharing Dominic’s work. Jean Francois has been a tireless advocate for photojournalism. The most amazing thing about the Visa pour L’Image festival at Perpignan is that thousands of people who are not photographers and not from the media visit and wait in line to see this work at the exhibits and evening screenings.

Amazing, sad photos. As a former Peace Corps volunteer in relatively nearby Malawi, it is difficult to imagine that such atrocities are still occurring. Please keep up the effort to draw attention to this conflict.

No question the photos are beautiful, powerful and stark. I must say, however, I find it borderline pathetic that the only images we see of Africa must necessarily be those of conflict and suffering, further crystalizing in the Western mind the idea that the continent is a basket case. War exists, it is true, but there are many ways to Thank you Mr. Nahr for risking your life to show the horrors of Congo’s civil war. I implore the NY Times to show Africa as a continent of more than blood-stained killing fields or lavish, wine-soaked dream vacations in S. Africa.
By depicting Africans as people for once, instead of refugees, conflicts like the civil war might capture our attention, not just our sympathy.

We sometimes forget the abject misery of the long suffering people of the Congo, as it is as if they have almost been air brushed out of the news. Yet, it is common knowledge that almost 5 million people have died there. Yet, the United States has persisted in invading Iraq and fighting two very unpopular and ultimately futile wars that collectively have cost almost one trillion dollars. If only a fraction of this sum were used for the poorest of the poor in the Congo.
I have returned from three years in Iraq, and watched the debacle there in disbelief. We should be outraged by the waste of resources and corruption there. I just finished the excellent book, Blood River, by Daily Telegraph journalist,Tim Butcher, coincidentally about the Congo, as it is good to know that there are still adventurous souls willing risk their lives to document the evil in this world.
I am glad that the young and talented Mr. Nahr has turned his back on his obviously privileged multicultural childhood in Switzerland to document the horrors in the Congo.

On the one side of the world, an old man takes a photographer to show the world ugly truth they are facing, on the other side a rich country looks for another country to invade and exploit. Photographers like Mr. Nahr always there to stare directly into your eyes and show you these poverty and war crimes. But does anyone really want to see it or do something about it?

A technical question: Why the strong vignetting on so many of the pictures? Is it a post-processing effect for atmosphere? Is he using cropped-sensor lenses on a full-frame camera? Otherwise the images are incredible.

After just spending a month in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I find myself speaking most often about the numbers: 5.4 million dead, 2,000 rapes per month, 17,000 UN soldiers, a war that started 15 years ago (or more?)….

And suddenly, the conflict seems impossibly huge, unsolvable, tragic, and remote. It is easy to forget that numbers are symbols, representing real people who take up an actual, physical space; who walk the down the dirt roads at sunset and carry water from the river, just as they did when I was there.

So far, my photos have had a great response, but I hope they raise more awareness about the reality of a difficult tragedy: http://vimeo.com/6284324

I’m Congolese and witness the war when it was on the east side (Kinshasa) in the mid and late 90’s. This “war” is ongoing since a long time ago, its a real genocide but ignored by the world.
The west of congo is butchered, women are rape constantly, people dying from bullets, knifes etc…

Show those pictures to the world, keep showing them because the media keep ignoring the problem because some powerful people want it to be ignored. The war is full of benefit for them. They can use our earth and exploit whatever they want if the country stays torn appart.

Keep showing pictures… people need to have those pics in their head, constantly until it stops!

Africa is a beautiful continent with a lot to offer. Its very unfortunate that the good is usually overrun by the negative and unimaginable atrocities. I grow up in Kenya and was back there during the election “craziness”. I don’t know what overcomes generally peaceful people to go about murdering their friends and neibours.
This pictures go to show just what happens when some people believe they are entitled to something and will do whatever it takes to attain that goal.
The innocent are the ones that suffer.
Thanks for the pictures and the reminder of just how cruel we can be to each other.

The brutality that we as a people: (Africans; African Americans) inflict upon each other all over the world is a sad testament to the savagery that exists among us. Why? Why is our hatred for each other so intense? And the innocents? What about them? Both in this cruel visage and in the streets of America? I am angry and saddened at the same time. Surely, we don’t need another angry Black man but this has to stop!
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I agree with you that the cruelty we Africans inflict on each other needs to stop. But I also have to remind you that you need to distinguish the small minority-less than 1% of people who engage in violence are representative of the whole continent. Maybe we need a way of communicating among ourselves that violence is not the best solution to solve our differences.

On the other hand, war is an enterprise and business go where opportunities abound. It’s a crazy world where AK 47 are more available than a 12 cent malaria treatment. Do we manufacture any of those? I doubt.